//------------------------------//
// Your Funeral, My Trial 
// Story: Children of Equestria 
// by Samey90 
//------------------------------//

Octavia stretched her limbs and turned a page of her newspaper. Lying in bed was a torture for her, but the doctor had told her not to overexert herself. She was looking forward to the delivery; now all she could do was to lie there, barely able to move. The only thing her belly was good for at that moment was to rest newspapers and books on it.

Not that she wasn’t excited. She was reading most of the books aloud to her baby. She also asked Dr. Stable to bring a gramophone to her room so she could spend days listening to classical music. Octavia didn’t believe in half of the things she’d read about in the guides for young parents, but it didn’t hurt to try. 

The door opened and Dr. Stable walked into the room. He looked at the newspaper Octavia was reading and shook his head. “You should avoid stress,” he said.

“Oh, come on.” Octavia looked at him and smiled. “I’m okay. Also, my grandmother gave birth to my mother in an air-raid shelter. I can manage a daily dose of bad news...” She turned back to her newspaper. “Did you hear that this filly who shot Jet Set was killed in Dodge Junction?”

“Minuette mentioned something about that,” Dr. Stable replied. “Swiped that Wonderbolt-killer from the first pages...” 

“Poor girl...” Octavia sighed. “She was just nineteen...”

“Poor?” Dr. Stable exclaimed. “She could’ve killed you!”

Octavia shrugged. “I don’t know... After what happened to Diamond Tiara, I look at it a bit different...”

“Yeah,” Dr. Stable muttered. “By the way, they caught Diamond Tiara too... I wonder what will happen to her...”





Diamond Tiara sobbed. Two guards were sitting on her both sides, watching the coffin with flat expressions. Behind her, Sweetie Belle was sitting alone, hiding her face in her hooves. Scootaloo was sitting in the first row, together with Apple Bloom, Applejack, and Big Macintosh. Archer was also there, hiding behind Scootaloo. Other Babs’ friends also appeared: a muscular donkey and a blue unicorn mare with a foal.

“Excuse me... Can I talk to Diamond?”

Even though Diamond Tiara didn’t hear that voice in ten years, she recognised it immediately. She turned her head to look at the young, orange mare with green mane, wearing a black outfit. 

“Two minutes,” one of the guards said, still watching the coffin. 

“Hello, Diamond.” Sunshine Rainbows whispered. “Are ya okay?”

“Not really,” Diamond Tiara replied and sighed. “Babs is dead and I may end up in prison or the hospital again...”

“Yeah...” Sunshine replied and looked at the coffin. “I knew her, ya know?” Since the guards were listening to them, Sunshine decided to spare Diamond Tiara the circumstances of her meeting with Babs. “It’s kinda weird when I have to prepare somepony I knew...”

“I can imagine...” Diamond Tiara muttered. She remembered way too many funerals of her friends. 

“It got easier after the first three,” Sunshine said. “But still... Didn’t expect her to end up like this. Well, maybe a bit.” She sighed. “I’m not good at it, am I? I wanted to say that it’ll get better. Y’know, don’t give up and such stuff...”

“I know,” Diamond Tiara replied. “But thank you, Sunshine. Take care.”

“See ya later, Diamond,” Sunshine Rainbows said. “Hopefully in better circumstances.” She walked away slowly, her hoofsteps echoing through the funeral parlour.

“Was she always that weird?” Silver Spoon asked. She was sitting on a bench before Diamond Tiara’s resting her hooves at its back. 

Diamond Tiara only nodded. 

“Here comes trouble...” Silver Spoon muttered, looking at the gate. 

Three ponies were walking towards the front row of the benches. One of them, a red mare resembling Big Macintosh a bit trotted to Archer and pushed her off the bench. “What is she doin’ here?” she yelled. 

“Sunflower...” Applejack stood up. 

“She killed my sister!” Sunflower exclaimed, shaking Archer brutally. “What is she doin’ here?”

“Sunflower!” Apple Bloom shouted, pushing her cousin away from Archer. “That’s not the time and place for that... Babs wouldn’t want to–”

“Well, thanks to her, we won’t know what Babs wanted and didn’t want to do!” Sunflower leaned closer to Apple Bloom. 

Apple Bloom looked into her cousin’s eyes coldly. “And where were y’all when she got outta the boot camp?” she asked. “Did ya let her go back home?”

“That’s not important...” Sunflower muttered. 

“Still, Babs spent a few months with us,” Applejack said. “And it’s interestin’ that her own family didn’t want to see her...”

“Maybe because she was a–”

“Sunflower...” Babs’ mother put her hoof on her daughter’s shoulder. “Enough. Babs wouldn’t want us to argue now...”

Sunflower looked at her mother angrily and trotted with her to the bench on the opposite side of the funeral parlour. 

“Well, at least they didn’t start a fight,” Silver Spoon said with a disappointed expression. 

Diamond Tiara said nothing, looking at Archer, who was standing next to Scootaloo, her head hanging low.





A few weeks later, Diamond Tiara was sitting in the middle of the courtroom, watching her lawyer, Twinkie Defense, as she was talking to Dr. Midline Shift. The jury was listening to them, interested. Some older mare looked at Diamond Tiara and, to her surprise, Diamond saw tears welling in her eyes.

“So, what happens if my client stops taking medicines?” Twinkie Defense asked.

“Well, she starts to hallucinate,” Midline Shift replied. “She’s also getting aggressive and may attack a pony, trying to kill them.”

“Can she control that?” 

“No. I’m actually surprised that she didn’t kill anypony while running away with Ms. Seed...”

Several members of the jury nodded. One of them levitated a notebook and wrote something in it. Diamond Tiara closed her eyes. Babs was dead, but she was alive... 

Don’t give up...

“It seems that they’ll let you go home,” Twinkie Defense whispered, sitting next to Diamond Tiara. “Just take your meds and don’t get into trouble... like Babs...”

“I’ll try to,” Diamond Tiara replied.





The coffin was slowly lowered to the ground. Scootaloo watched it with grim expression and turned to Archer, only to see her cousin slowly walking away. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I can’t...” Archer replied and sighed. “It was far too easy... To just pull the trigger...”

“She was trying to kill Diamond,” Scootaloo said. 

“I know,” Archer muttered and turned around. “I know and still...” She shook her head. “I’ll be in the nearest bar...”





A different courtroom and a different judge. This time there was no audience, just a few Royal Guards. Archer was sitting in the middle of the room, sweating profusely as she looked into the faces of the fellow guards. 

Archer felt a taste of bile in her mouth. She understood why she was there. She knew well that she deserved it; it was actually a relief for her, but the feeling was overshadowed by something else. 

She knew exactly what she’d hear soon.

“According to our reconstruction of the events, Babs Seed was armed and clearly had an intention to kill Diamond Tiara,” the judge said. “Therefore, you had the right to use any means to prevent that. We won’t be pressing any charges against you.”

Archer looked at the floor. She stood up automatically and left the room without looking at anypony. She trotted down the court corridor and walked out of the building. She sighed and walked along the street of Canterlot. It was a cold, January afternoon, and soon she started to shiver. Ponies were walking around her, but Archer didn’t care. She thought that she probably had to go home, to Scootaloo now, but she didn’t want to.

Until Babs’ funeral, Scootaloo was keeping herself together, but later it was like everything collapsed on her: Rumble getting arrested, a bitter fight with Sweetie Belle, Apple family experiencing yet another loss... Archer wanted to make her happy, but for the first time in her life, she was failing at it.

She stood in the middle of the bridge and rested herself against the barrier, looking into the water. She leaned forward, raising her hooves, and closed her eyes.

“Archer?”

Archer opened her eyes and looked at the colt who called her. “Hello, Button,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just taking a walk,” Button replied. “After Sweetie and I...”

“Yeah, that sucked...” Archer muttered, getting off the barrier. “In fact, everything sucks recently...”

“What exactly were you doing here?” Button asked, looking at the barrier. 

“About to do something stupid,” Archer replied. “Let’s go, Button.”

“Where?” 

Archer sighed. “Anywhere but here...”





The first lump of earth fell on the lid of Babs’ coffin with a hollow thump. Soon, another followed, slowly filling the grave. Sunflower stood above it, motionless, her face showing no emotions. 





Gilda stood in the dark alley of Baltimare, motionless, listening to the hoofsteps behind her. “If you wanna rob me, you can try, punk,” she said, blowing smoke from her cigarette. “But don’t cry later...”

“I won’t.” Lightning Dust landed in front of her and raised a balisong knife. The blade stopped an inch from Gilda’s throat. “Nice, isn’t it? Belonged to Babs Seed, but she won’t need it anymore...”

“Feather Duster?” Gilda smirked. “Almost didn’t recognise you. Did you take a shower?”

“That’s ‘Lightning Dust’ to you,” Lightning Dust replied. She reached her hoof to Gilda’s beak and grabbed her cigarette. She sniffed it and threw it on the ground, smashing it with her hoof. “You know, I only smoke when I’m stressed. Like three years ago...”

“Are you gonna tell me your life story?” Gilda asked, looking at Lightning Dust and trying to assess if she could catch her off guard. 

“Only this one. You see, three years ago, I really wanted to smoke after my now deceased friend changed some griffons into minced meat in an old warehouse...” Lightning smirked grimly, seeing that Gilda’s face became even paler than usual. “You know what was funny? None of these griffons had cigarettes.”

Gilda gulped. “What do you want?”

“It’s funny that I assumed that they had to smoke, you know?” Lightning Dust pushed the knife closer towards Gilda’s throat. “Then I thought that there has to be someone with them... Someone who quenched her cigarette on the fur of a dying filly... Repeatedly.”

“I... She was already dying,” Gilda said quickly. “Completely out of her mind... I couldn’t do anything...”

“So you used her as an ashtray?” Lightning Dust clicked her tongue. “Really, Gilda?”

“I... I dream about her every night...” Gilda’s voice was shaking. Her eyes widened. “Every... fucking... night... I wish I could help her, I really do! But it was too late when I came there... I yelled at them... Ran away from there... Like a coward...”

“Really? I really wish I could believe you...” With these words, Lightning Dust swung her knife upwards, leaving a long wound on Gilda’s face. Gilda automatically raised her wing to defend herself, but then Lightning Dust hit the base of her wing with the knife. 

Gilda screamed. Her left wing went numb and fell down limply. Lightning pulled the knife out, causing her to scream again and collapse, pressing the wound with her claws. There wasn’t much blood on the blade – it didn’t hit any major vessel, but the torn nerves meant that Gilda would never fly again. 

“See you, Gilda,” Lightning Dust said in a monotone voice, closing the knife and hiding it in her saddlebags. “I hope you’ll dream about that filly till the end of your life.”

“F-fuck you...” Gilda muttered, swallowing her tears.

Lightning only shrugged and flew away. 





The funeral ended. The crowd slowly dissipated, leaving only Sunflower sitting by the grave, hiding her face in her hooves. Sunshine Rainbows approached her and sat next to her. “Are ya okay?” she asked.

“Do I look like?” Sunflower gave Sunshine a nasty look. 

“Oh...” 

“Go away,” Sunflower muttered. “Just... leave me alone...”





The hot wind was blowing, causing the waves of sand to hit against the tent’s fabric. The zebra stallion inside yawned. He had to spend the whole day there, waiting for suitable candidates, but barely anyone came. He was just thinking about leaving his outpost, when somepony moved the fabric aside and entered the tent.

The zebra smirked. The mare in front of him was not only a pony, but also a pegasus. The Zebrican army needed an air force, but pegasi were scarce. “Good afternoon,” he said. 

“Hello,” the aquamarine mare replied. “I’ve heard I can join your army here.”

“Well, it depends if you can fly...” he said.

She only smiled. “I flew all the way from Equestria,” she replied. 

The zebra nodded and grabbed a pen. “What’s your name?”

“Feather Duster,” the mare replied. 

He wrote the name in the documents. It was probably fake, but he couldn’t care less; most of the ponies joining the Zebrican Army to fight the rebeliants were outlaws or wanted criminals. The army couldn’t be picky. “Any particular reason why you want to join?” he asked. 

“No, not really,” Feather Duster replied. “Just running away from something...”





The snow melted, changing the streets of Ponyville into muddy rivers. Diamond Tiara trotted through them, trying not to get her hooves dirty. On her way from the railway station, she saw Bon Bon who was walking slowly, her saddlebags full of groceries. Even though the bruises and cuts on her face disappeared, Bon Bon still was limping, staring at the ground beneath her hooves. Her mane, usually neatly curled, was messy and unkempt. When she saw Diamond Tiara, she froze, but soon approached her.

“I’m sorry,” Bon Bon said, avoiding Diamond Tiara’s gaze. “It was Cherry... I didn’t know she’d–”

“It’s okay,” Diamond Tiara replied. “I’m sorry too... For your sister... And for what Babs did to you...”

“Poor filly,” Bon Bon said half-heartedly. “I mean, she was a psycho, but still–”

“I’m a psycho too,” Diamond Tiara interrupted her. 

“But you’re different,” Bon Bon replied. “So much different than her...”

Diamond Tiara stared at Bon Bon blankly, not sure what to say. Babs, as far as Diamond Tiara knew, didn’t see her dead friends telling her to murder somepony. But on the other hoof, she witnessed Babs shooting a pony in cold blood... And then she was almost killed in the same way. Had Archer been a bit slower...

Bon Bon wrapped her hooves around Diamond Tiara and hugged her. Diamond Tiara froze and wanted to push the older mare away at first, but Bon Bon quickly retreated herself. “See you later, Diamond Tiara,” she said. “Take care...”

For a moment Diamond Tiara stood in the middle of the path, watching Bon Bon walking away. Then she shrugged and walked towards her home. 

To her surprise, she saw that the gate was open. She pushed it and walked through the garden, to the door. Diamond Tiara looked around, at the naked trees and dry grass. She knew that in a few weeks everything would be green, but now it looked just like she felt. She raised her hoof and knocked.

“Diamond Tiara!” Filthy Rich exclaimed, opening the door. Diamond walked inside and hugged her father. They walked to the living room.

“It’s so good to see you back,” Filthy Rich said. He thought for a moment before asking, “How are you?”

“Better,” Diamond Tiara replied. They had seen each other earlier, soon after Diamond was found, but they didn’t have much time to talk. Diamond’s constant medical examinations and the trial weren’t helping them in getting together. During their short meetings, Filthy Rich carefully avoided the topic of Diamond’s escape with Babs. “I... I’m sorry, dad,” Diamond Tiara said. “I was... you know, without meds, panicked... She told me that I killed Cherry...”

“I understand that,” Filthy Rich replied. “I don’t blame you, Diamond. I keep telling you that you’re not a bad filly...” He smiled. “You’re the best daughter in the whole world and nothing will change this.”

Diamond Tiara felt tears escaping her eyes. “Thank you, dad... I don’t think I deserve this...”

“It’s okay, Diamond,” Filthy Rich replied. “Now, you’re finally home and we can spend some time together... That is, until you go back to Canterlot. I’ve heard Octavia Melody said she is going to give a small recital ‘once her daughter will be responsible enough to stay with her father’...” Filthy Rich chuckled.

“Well, I didn’t decide what to do yet,” Diamond Tiara said. “I think I’ll visit Curtain Call in Trottingham one day... She’s still in the hospital and I know how she feels...”

Filthy Rich nodded. “That’s a good idea. But now, you should stay a bit with your old dad... Do you want something to eat?”

Diamond Tiara nodded. Soon, the servants brought the supper and for a brief moment she could focus on food, forgetting about all her problems. After she ate, she went to her room, saying that she was tired and wanted to catch some sleep.

She closed the door, turned off the light and lay down on her bed. The soft light of the moon was casting shadows on the walls of her bedroom. Diamond Tiara looked at it and closed her eyes, thinking about tomorrow.

There were so many things to be done. 


---THE END---